The Phoenix Always Rises...or Does it?

At first glance the phoenix rising symbolizes triumphant completion, but what if the ‘rising’ really refers to the ride not just the results?

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I’m always consciously trying to flow with the cycles of the natural world around me, but to say that 2025 was filled with a shake, rattle and roll — would be an understatement. Supermoons, the ending of a 9-year cycle, the Solstice, the holidays...the world, both inner and outer. It’s been a lot.

Maybe it always is. Maybe it’s age. Maybe it’s wisdom, but it felt particularly heightened for me. As the year progressed, it felt louder...undeniable, unavoidable.

Like most of us I have my tools of deflection, but even those failed. So, what do I do when the irrefutable discomfort stares me in the face? I reflect, pray, pay attention, try to stay self-reflective and lean in so I can see what is calling to be seen.

What do the café windows have to do with any of this? Well, they are always divinely timed and come bearing gifts of soulful wisdom aside from being works of art.

For those of you who know me or have been on this list, you know how I wait like a child the night before Christmas to see the unveiling of our holiday windows. Santa’s helpers descend upon the café the Tuesday after Thanksgiving and under the charge of Chief Beauty Maker, Myoshin Thurman, a delight unfolds.

And delight it does...for weeks to come as customers capture images from both the inside and out. It’s a joy to witness their experience. I wonder to myself about what it stirs within them.

I’ll admit though, this year when I first caught glance of the windows, I was startled. Wait! What’s this? A Phoenix rising from the ashes? Doesn’t that reflect triumph, courage, strength?

Now don’t get me wrong, I love the metaphor, but truth be told...at first it didn’t resonate. I wanted it to resonate. I mean come on...who doesn’t want to rise triumphantly? But I didn’t feel triumphant. I didn’t feel like I was rising from anything. In fact, I felt somewhat caught up in the messy middle, still processing, still figuring out, still floundering a bit.

Was it disingenuous to tell others to rise when I felt like I was crawling uphill on my knees? Then I realized that I was assigning a meaning to this that I didn’t have to subscribe to.

What if it was OK to be inspired by something and also feel not quite yet there?

What if we were all in our own ways climbing uphill?

What if this was the reminder we needed that it was OK, actually honest and truthful, to feel caught somewhere in the middle?

2025 took me on a ride. It wasn’t all ‘bad’ there was so much joy and laughter, expansion and growth, but I had a strange sense of limbo for much of it. It was almost as if I were caught between two worlds. This notion of embracing the 2^nd chapter of my life kept nudging me.

The ending of this year and the beginning of a new one feels particularly loaded this time around. Who do I want to be? How do I want to feel? What do I want to create? Where do I want to be? What imprint and legacy do I want to leave?

The reality is that we don’t walk in clarity, we walk in faith. Hindsight is earned not understood in the present moment. And still we try.

I think the wisdom that comes with age reminds us that it’s not the certainty, it’s the trust in our ability to rise. Look for evidence of where you’ve done this before. Stay in your heart, your intuition, your truth — not your fear of ‘what ifs’. Lean on God, your intuition, your heart, your compassion, your connection, your intelligence — your ability to love.

Recently I awoke one morning after relinquishing this insistence upon having to know where I was rising, what was my mission. I stopped demanding and allowed. Call it blind faith if you like.

But my answers came.

Two words arrived: avoidance and acknowledgment (a strange pairing, I know). But it is in this acceptance of life’s duality that our answers are found.

I am grateful for this precious life journey. Of course, I don’t embrace hardship or challenge any more than the next person. I’d rather skip over those parts, but those parts create the beauty at the end of the storm.

It seems appropriate to be concluding the year of the snake according to the Chinese zodiac.

What are you ready to shed?

Old ways of being?

Pretending you’re OK?

People-pleasing?

Denying what you know to be true?

Not trusting yourself?

Feeling lost?

We stand on the cusp of a new year, the year of the fire horse emboldens us to move forward boldly, not impulsively. It is steeped in optimism, movement, expansion, freedom, progress.

I’ll take it all.

Another one of my avoidant strategies is comparison. I regularly shame my own feelings, what are you complaining about? Other people have ‘real’ suffering. Get over it!

Well, dear friends, pain is relative and felt the same way to our nervous systems. Diminishing your own doesn’t make it go away. Recently in prayer, I felt released from this pressure cooker with the emergence of one word that felt like a divine message, REVIEW.

In scanning my year, I began to see everything through a new lens. I began to exhale and to see myself and the story a bit differently. I stopped beating myself up because not everything felt complete. I released myself from trying to make sense of it all or tie it up in a shimmery holiday bow.

It was messy, hard, gorgeous, expansive, constrictive, sparkly, raw...all of it.

I made hard decisions, important changes, questioned things I was avoiding, was disappointed. I had to shift out of my ‘comfort zones’, had to sit with guilt and a bit of resentment and reconcile it all.

One thing’s for sure: I recognized that it wasn’t going anywhere. Denial wasn’t my friend and besides, apparently, I was ready. I rolled up my sleeves and took a good look at this pile of feelings. It was time to let go of my old scripts. It’s too heavy. I’ve outgrown much of it. It’s time.

And in this new year I want to take what I have learned thus far, even though it makes me squirm a bit in discomfort — and simply acknowledge that growing is rising, being honest is rising, softening is rising, exhaling is rising, movement is rising.

Perhaps you too feel a bit stuck or uncertain? Perhaps when you look all around, all you see are the flames? Could you lean in and trust that all that burns rises?

May this fierce phoenix infuse you with your own reconciliation — and may you be gentle (infused with a bit of tough love) and foster movement, expansion and becoming. May you remember that we are purified by the fire and yes, we rise. We step forward from the ashes and we carry on.

Cheers 2026!

—Lea Haas, Owner, The Cafe Woodstock

“The phoenix always rises. If you are burning — you are rising.”

~ Danielle LaPorte